Assumed Master (10 page)

"No. I’m saying if you don’t do this
right and she expresses anything that remotely leads me to believe she’s
unhappy or wants out, I’ll advocate for her. Are you serious about learning how
to be with her? Are you really willing to give a little and actively negotiate
with her even if it means compromising what you want?"

"Yes."

"Then I’m at your service. When do we get
started?"

Chapter Nine

Blake said his good-byes after breakfast and left
to take the boys to school leaving Julie alone with Dante. She wasn’t sure if
she had reservations about this little talk of his or not. On the one hand, she
still held some guilt over being here at all coupled with her anger at Mason
for putting her in this position to begin with. Would she ever be able to
forgive him? On the other hand, something seemed to have shifted in Dante. She
wasn’t sure when it happened, but she was sure it peaked last night when he
insisted she stop cooking, relax for a while, and go to bed with him and Blake.
Naked.
Which, if she were being
honest, hadn’t bothered her.
The truth of it was it had been a relief as
she was so used to being in that state to begin with. She didn’t really
understand how Blake managed to switch from nudity to fully-clothed depending
on if the boys were home or not without batting an eye. For her, clothing had
become an impediment of sorts, only serving to cover what was Mason’s from
others’ eyes when they left the house or when their vanilla friends visited.

"I’m glad you actually ate something,"
Dante noted as Julie stacked dishes in the sink, getting ready to fill the
dishwasher.

"I feel a little bit better, Sir,"
she confessed, scraping the remnants of Blake’s eggs Benedict down the
disposer. "When I don’t rest enough, I get a bit muddled. I’m sorry."

"There’s no need to be sorry, love. I get
it. I get a lot of things. And the things I don’t I’m going to learn." A
wave of warmth swept over Julie when Dante took her hands and with the gentlest
touch, emptied them of her chore. He dried her hands and led her back to her
seat at the island and helped her take it. "I talked to Allen this
morning."

Panic swelled in Julie’s chest. Was he tired
of her already? While it was true she wasn’t particularly thrilled with their
situation as it was, the only thing she could think of worse than being here
was being pawned off on yet another Dom. It must have shown on her face because
Dante quickly began to explain himself.

"I asked for help. I’m not trying to dispose
of you."

"What kind of help?" she asked with
caution.

"Help in becoming the kind of Dom, the
kind of man, you need me to be." After pouring himself another cup of
coffee, Dante took the end stool and leaned his elbows on the edge of the
counter. "Honestly, I think I need to be a better man not just for you,
but for Blake. I think he’s cowed to me for so long I’ve lost sight of what it
is he needs, too. If I were being completely honest, and it’s high time I am, I
may have missed the fact he tries so hard to be obedient and subservient to me
he fails to express what it is he wants. He's probably felt slighted for years
and never said a word and I was so absorbed with how well I thought things were
going I ignored it.
Consciously?
Sub-consciously?
Both?
I don’t know. I just know it’s time to face it
and fix it."

"What are you talking about? You’re a
good master, Sir. Blake adores you." Julie couldn’t fathom what Dante was
talking about. If there were problems in their marriage, they weren’t
detectable to the outsider looking in and she sure hadn’t picked up on them
since she’d been here. Of course, she’d been less than attentive to her
surroundings. How could she see anything past her own grieving?

"Adoring me may well be the issue.
Sometimes someone can adore someone else so much they fail to live up to their
own hopes and dreams by compromising those things to make the other person
happy. In the meantime, the other person can sometimes be so self-absorbed they
fail to see what’s happening. Then they start to take that person for granted.
In essence, by lack of attention, I’ve failed Blake. I didn’t realize it until
a few days ago. I have to stop failing him and I never want to fail you."

Did Dante believe she’d been guilty of the
same crime with Mason on some level? It occurred to her, she never fully
trusted her own husband. If she had, she’d have tried harder to negotiate.

Just thinking of his death now invoked the
anger she’d been practicing keeping at bay, again. So infuriated she wanted to
throw things like she had in Mason’s den that day, it took every bit of effort Julie
had not to hop down from her stool now and go on a mad rage through Dante’s
home destroying everything in her path. Her life was the very definition of
irony.

Just then, a very perceptive Dante noticed the
fury building and reached out for her shaking hand.

"Mason was a good man. He’d have never
done what I’ve done any more intentionally than I did. You’re going to have
angry days and that’s okay. We’ll figure out an outlet for it. But don’t be mad
over what-ifs or assumptions. No regrets."

"I'd like to take a short-tail to him,"
she admitted through gritted teeth.

"Are you entirely certain there’s not a
bit of a switch somewhere in there?" Dante asked, a crooked smile taking
over his face, sending those boyish crinkles rippling along the edges of his
eyes.

"Positive," she snapped, regretting
it immediately as she saw how her tone stabbed him.

"Tone, my love.
Watch it. And you know you love Mason more
than life itself. You might think you want to do that, but you don’t mean it."

"I’m sorry, Sir. How will Allen help?"

"It seems while I’ve been forever
fascinated by the techniques of others, I’ve not been attentive enough to learn
from them. I thought as long as Blake and I were happy and getting along, there
was no need to step outside the box. I was wrong. You and Blake are as
different as night and day and if I'm going to be able to be Master to you
both, I have to learn to adjust. I’m not exactly sure how we’ll figure it all
out, but as Allen so eloquently put it, the vultures are circling and I have to
learn on the fly. I do believe, love, this is our first negotiation. Do you
agree to let Allen assist us in learning how to make this work?"

"I trust Allen. And if you think this is
best, I can agree to it." Julie hesitated, remembering the admonishment of
her own actions with Mason a few minutes ago and decided to go a step further. "But
Sir, if things aren't working like they’re supposed to or I think we’re unhappy,
I won’t keep it to myself. I want to know you’ll be generous enough to
re-negotiate if necessary."

"Agreed."

Dinner with the Gavril and Lucien went well
and after Julie found they were quite happy staying with Drake because he
apparently had two hot girls living down the street with whom the boys were now
enamored, she started to feel a bit better about them being away from home a
few more days. That night she had no qualms whatsoever disrobing and climbing
in bed on one side of Dante while Blake curled up on the other side of him. And
for the first time in a long, she slept all night.

Chapter Ten

 
"For
the last time, please, Sir. Take Blake and go to the party. I’ll be fine here
passing out treats to the little goblins," Julie said, exasperated that
after almost six months of continually getting better, Dante still had
reservations about leaving her alone and to her own devices.

It seemed it had little to do with the
incident in the den the day of Mason’s funeral and more to do with his
increasing possessiveness of her. Their time had been spent much as he said it
would be, getting used to each other and learning. And his no sexual contact
rule had stood firm. He never made advances and if he and Blake needed alone
time, it was arranged. Tonight the twins, still smitten with the girls they’d
met while staying with Drake, were away at an all-night horror flick party at a
house near Drake's and it was the adults’ first opportunity to go to a play
party in quite a long time. Julie didn’t feel ready to participate in any such
thing, but Dante was insistent she shouldn’t spend the evening alone.

Julie suspected Dante’s possessiveness and the
problem he had with her staying by herself on the devil’s night
was
caused by the attitude of their neighbors. While they
never made direct connotations or confronted Julie face-to-face, she was aware
of the general feeling of disgust they held for her and her family. It was an
unspoken rule the Larson clan kept to themselves and ignored the stupidity of
the rest of those populating their cul-de-sac.

"I realize you’re nowhere near ready to
play, love, but I don’t think being anti-social is a good thing to be doing
either," Dante said, taking the bag of candy out of her hands she’d been
just about to dump in her treat bowl.

"I’m not being anti-social,
Sir
." She snatched the candy bag
back out of his hand and finished adding it to the already brimming dish. "Remember
when you said you’d be amicable to negotiations? Unless you directly order me
to go to this thing, the answer is no. And I hope it’s not an order because
going would make me very unhappy. I’m not ready to see all those people and
have them look at me funny or ask me a million times if I’m okay."

Dante rubbed his forehead and shook his head,
clearly still not totally kosher with her answer, but seeming to at least
understand and accept it. "I didn’t think of that."

"Of course not.
And it wouldn’t be fair for you to have to
check on me the whole evening and neglect the time you have to spend playing
with Blake. Or worse, have to leave early because my anxiety ratchets up and I
need to come home and cook or clean or mess up your office books shelves."

Julie set the bowl down on the table in the
foyer and trotted off toward the kitchen, intent she’d have a night to herself
for a change. Just her, a few trick or treaters, and a pizza with more on it
than meat. If there was one thing she’d learned, Dante liked meat on his pizza
and lots of it. As for veggies, those were another matter entirely. He also
wasn’t fond of anchovies, something she adored and cooked with regularly
although he had no idea that nutty, saltiness in her eggplant pasta sauce could
be attributed to his least favorite, miniscule fish.

"As soon as you’re ready to play again,
there won’t be a need for all those stress relievers. I have to tell you
though,
the cooking one doesn’t bother me all that much."
He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, leaning in and
rubbing his cheek against hers. "In fact, I like that one very much.
As far as quality.
The quantity gets a bit extreme
sometimes, but I think you have a few new fans among Gav and Luc’s buddies. In
fact, if they weren’t young and full of piss and vinegar, I might be worried. I
think a couple of them have designs on you other than having you cook."

"Seriously, Sir.
What would a bunch of sixteen year old boys
want with someone as old as me?"

"I was a sixteen year old boy once,"
Dante said, rue lacing his tone.
"A horny one at that.
I had my eye on my girlfriend’s mom for all of a few minutes. She figured out I
watched her mom’s ass more than I did hers and she cut me off and discarded me.
How old is too old to trick or treat?"

Julie rolled her eyes and shimmied out of
Dante’s grasp. "There shouldn’t be anyone over the age of ten or twelve
coming to the door.
Right?"

In truth, she and Mason had lived so far out
they never had trick or treaters once in all the years they resided on the
river so Julie actually had no idea what the etiquette was. If anyone did show,
they’d been left wanting as Mason never turned down an invitation to one of
Allen’s costume balls on Halloween and they were never home for the holiday
anyway.

"The boys got tired of it at age nine and
preferred parties and watching scary movies. I have no idea why, but I got the
feeling we were considered the weird parents.
Like we weren’t
already."
Dante grabbed a chip out of Julie’s bowl, stuck in the
spicy homemade ranch dip she loved, and popped it in his mouth. "Wonder
what the neighbors think now?"

"Who gives a damn," Julie said,
trotting back off to the living room just as the doorbell rang. "I thought
we were all past caring what others thought and were practicing ignoring their
ignorance. Otherwise we’d be in hiding and not living at all."

Dante mumbled something inaudible, pulling the
door open and plastering on a happy, all-American Dad face. "Well, what
have we here?"

"Trick or treat," a few high pitched
voices rang out, none of which Julie could discern by sound.

Although the kids were pretty generic in their
presence, she could plainly see what Dante was talking about written all over
the faces of the parents accompany them. This was her first visible sign that
the rumors of hatred surrounding their arrangement were in fact true. Emotions
ranging from disgust to curiosity to outright hate ran across the features of
the adults standing in her doorway.